


b-sides and rarities

by fathomfive



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Pining, canon-typical musical melodrama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-11
Updated: 2020-01-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:20:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22205545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fathomfive/pseuds/fathomfive
Summary: Some songs, Jaskier sings for Geralt only.  Too bad it takes Geralt so long to notice.To anyone else, Jaskier would be just a spot of movement in the darkness.  Movement and a soft clear voice, picking up the threads of a refrain, winding them together, letting go again.  But Geralt can see him quite clearly.He rides with his chin up, eyes front, easy with the motion of his horse.  He’s within arm’s reach, but he looks far, far away.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 261
Kudos: 2567





	b-sides and rarities

The gate guard raises her polearm reflexively when Geralt comes out of the treeline. He doesn’t stop, just points to the fleder corpse slung over Roach’s back. It’s still dripping, and so is he.

“Business,” he says.

“Ah,” she says, brow creasing beneath her dinged helmet. “Er, yes. The alderman’s expecting—yes. Thank you, witcher.”

Geralt narrows his eyes. It’s a little harder than usual, with blood and a spray of digestive fluid drying on his face.

“Yeah,” he says finally, and heads on through the gate.

Blonstadd started out as a fortified town, but eventually people twigged to the fact that there wasn’t anything here worth fortifying, so the stockade’s in shit condition and the streets are mostly churned mud. Geralt goes to the alderman, leaving a trail of purple-black blood behind him. When he’s done trading corpse for coin he makes his way to Blonstadd’s one inn.

People watch him as he goes. That’s nothing new. But the pack of children out by the general store actually follow him for a block and a half, staring and shushing each other. One of them is humming, the tune so familiar he doesn’t really register it until he gets to the inn. _O valley of plenty, O valley of plenty._

He snorts. The children scatter like rats, gasping and giggling.

He washes down Roach and then himself, and goes down to the inn’s common room for dinner. It’s an old building with plenty of dark corners to settle into; in fact, more dark corners than one would expect from the look of the outside. Geralt picks the darkest. A fire crackles in the grate, and someone sings hoarse and haltingly, _your witcher,_ _toss a coin to_ _your witcher._

Three days down the river, he finds the source of the song. He’s on foot, leading Roach, and the two of them prick their ears up at about the same time. There are raised voices and scuffling sounds coming from the slope above the path. Geralt signals Roach to hold with a palm flat to her withers. He draws his sword. A blur of baby blue silk bursts out of the brush and collides with him.

He catches Jaskier by the arm and spins him around, lute case bumping against his back. Jaskier struggles for just a second, and then his eyes light on Geralt’s face and he breaks into a grin. Geralt lets go of him immediately.

His palm tingles with the sensation of smooth fabric, shot through with silver threads.

“What did you do,” he says.

“Nothing that warrants getting my balls removed with a rusty spoon, as several interested parties have promised,” Jaskier says. “Just some honest confusion with a landlord’s son, and his lovely mistress—oh, don’t look at me like that. It was a very nice way to pass the time, up until it wasn’t. Fancy running into you, though! You’re here on business, I presume?”

Geralt waits until the words stop coming out. He can’t imagine anything more exhausting than listening to Jaskier, except maybe being Jaskier. He opens his mouth, changes his mind about it, and faces the wooded slope again. A man about Jaskier’s age bounds out onto the path. He’s unarmed and already out of breath. He doesn’t seem to have a rusty spoon. A woman follows him, slightly older and wielding a broom. Geralt assesses the broom automatically and decides he can ignore it.

“Go away,” he says.

“That a friend of yours?” the man says defiantly. The woman looks at her broom, and then at Geralt.

“Yes,” Jaskier says, while Geralt shrugs. “He’s very invested in my wellbeing, and as you can see his sword’s _very_ big, so I think it’s best for all of us if we lay our dispute aside here and carry on as new people, unencumbered by—”

“I see, so a big sword’s all you’re after,” the woman snaps. “You scag, you told me it was matters of the heart.”

“Wait, that’s what he told _me_ ,” the man says. He sniffs loudly and glares at Jaskier. “Are you false all the way through?”

Jaskier makes an offended noise. Geralt doesn’t have to turn around to know what his face looks like right now.

“ _Everything_ I do is a matter of the heart,” Jaskier says hotly. “I never meant to—that is—neither of you were quite honest with me either, you know.”

The man goes even redder. The woman strangles her broom. Geralt lets out all the breath in his lungs.

“Either try to kill him or go away,” he says. “I have somewhere to be.”

The man looks furtively at Geralt. Geralt stares back.

“Elaine, love. Let me make it up to you,” the man says.

The woman shrieks and hits him with the broom. Geralt walks around Jaskier, swings onto Roach’s back, then sheathes his sword and hauls the bard up behind him.

“We’re going,” he says.

“Not the eyes, not the eyes, Elaine,” Jaskier yelps. “You’ll regret it later!”

Geralt nudges Roach to a bouncy trot, and Jaskier shuts up because it’s either that or bite his tongue. They ride skirting the woodland until the light of afternoon turns dark gold and orange.

“Go on,” Jaskier says finally. “Ask, I know you’re dying to hear the story. It was a good one, right up until it wasn’t.” He sounds forlorn and forsaken and all the other things people are in ballads, and Geralt considers pushing him off Roach. But then he’d have to stop and let him back on again.

“Only one question,” he says. “How did you avoid getting your balls cut off before we met?”

“I’ve always been able to put on a good turn of speed,” Jaskier says.

He starts singing to himself, two fingers hooked into a strap on Geralt’s leathers. Geralt’s expecting the start of another terrible love ballad, but the words never get that far. It’s just phrases and notes, _O fear_ _o flight_ _, unbeknownst to me._ Jaskier turns them over like he’s trying to fit a puzzle together. _By morning light_ _,_ _o_ _gallant grace of something something_ _—_ _ah,_ _bugger the rhyme._ After a while he gives it up and goes quiet.

They pool their funds for a room at an inn, and Jaskier slides into Geralt’s carefully selected dark corner with a mug of ale and a smaller glass of amber liquor. He hands the ale over and takes a sip of his own drink. The scent clings to him, honey and spices.

“So, are we keeping count of how many times you’ve saved my skin?” he says.

“Yeah. For billing,” Geralt says. He waits while Jaskier decides this is a joke and laughs, his whole face going soft and open—well, more soft and open.

Jaskier’s moods are like the weather this side of the mountains, fair and clear and easily shifted in the exception. That’s one of the reasons Geralt doesn’t mind traveling with him. All the talk talk talking is the tradeoff, of course, but on the whole it’s not disagreeable.

Geralt has learned to value things that are not disagreeable. They’re rarer than one would think. Jaskier’s harmless, good for a laugh—not that Geralt laughs—and he’s good company. When he’s around, people tend to relax.

They travel together for another two weeks, until Geralt follows a job inland at the same time that Jaskier’s invited to a party on the coast. Jaskier sings in the inns and taverns, all songs as frilly and ridiculous as the rest of him. It’s irritating stuff, but it does make people less likely to turn on Geralt for existing in their general presence. And sometimes Jaskier will catch his eye, all lit up with the pleasure of the crowd’s attention, and smile like this is a celebration for the two of them. Like Geralt’s right there with him, not across the room in darkness with a wall to his back and an eye on all points of exit.

To Geralt’s own surprise he’ll sometimes raise his mug in answer.

* * *

In the deep snows of the Avern Valley, the world is blank and white. The snow muffles Geralt’s hearing and makes his eyes water, and he has to stop a few times a day to dig the ice balls out of Roach’s hooves. It’s during one of those times, crouched with a hoof in his lap, that he hears the singing.

He finishes the job, then leads Roach at a gentle pace toward the stand of pines up ahead. They’re at the crown of a small rise where the snow grows shallow. Jaskier is crouched beneath the biggest tree, alternating between blowing on his kindling and singing to himself in a quiet thoughtless way.

He hasn’t noticed Geralt yet. Geralt stops a few horse-lengths away and watches him leaning over his cupped hands with a warm glow reflecting on his cheeks and throat. He looks like he’s been eating all right, and his coat and scarf seem decently warm.

“Trying to bring the mountains down?” Geralt says, moving to close the distance.

Jaskier starts, and then bounds to his feet and bows and gestures Geralt in among the pines, all without missing a beat. He’s always on beat, even if no one else can hear the rhythm.

“Long time no see!” he says. “And you sneak up on me like always, of course. You’re looking well, and —wait, what do you mean about bringing the mountain down?”

Geralt gestures with his head at the razor peaks that loom over the valley. “Too much vibration means an avalanche,” he says. “Careful what you sing.”

“Your faith in the power of my voice is very gratifying,” Jaskier says. Geralt rolls his eyes. “I guess I’d better not sing the one about the Countess of Lirivel and her three elven lovers, the chorus on that one is all _kinds_ of vibration—”

“Stick to quiet,” Geralt suggests. He takes a seat by the growing fire. Dry wood is scarce this time of year, so he contributes a few dried cowpats from his fuel pouch.

“Oh, _quiet_ ,” Jaskier says. “Like this?” He starts singing again, his voice husky with the cold. It’s a low rhythmic tune that Geralt recognizes, from somewhere long off in memory. A lullaby. His voice doesn’t resonate off the far mountains, it hovers in the space between them.

Geralt gives him a flat look and turns to the fire. Jaskier beams at him the way he does when he’s decided that they’re having an argument and he’s cleverly won it. He sticks both feet out toward the fire, his breath coming in clouds before his face, and keeps singing.

They’re both headed to the valley mouth, so they go together, following the course of the frozen Avern River. Geralt goes to the supply post there and takes a contract for a creature that’s been burrowing under the snow and dragging travelers to their deaths. He heads out on foot to scout the area. The snow is new-fallen here, unmarked with tracks save for a the path dug between the supply post and its stable, and the light prints of animals.

Jaskier insists on coming along, which Geralt doesn’t protest because of the way he was making eyes at the quartermaster’s aide earlier—he’s not interested in getting chased out of the place before he gets paid. They’re some distance from the supply post when the thin crust on the snow begins to crack and shiver.

Geralt hears it too late, the noise dampened by wet snow. He draws his sword, crowds Jaskier behind him, and barely gets his blade up in time as a white shape bursts from the snow in front of him.

It’s a dragger-worm, though he’s only ever seen them in marshland. This one is pale as a grub, its hide covered in thick bristles. He parries the first strike from the feeler-arms on its head, and lops off the nearest two when it comes in for another grab. It rears, the tendrils on the tip of each feeler going rigid momentarily.

“Eugh, that is horrible,” Jaskier says from behind him. Then there’s a _whump_ _h_ and a strangled shout and Geralt becomes aware that there’s no one behind him at all.

He can’t stop himself from turning to look. All he sees is a lump in the snow, burrowing swiftly away, before he gets a mane of sticky feeler-arms to the face and chest, knocking him back into the snow. They’re thin but they sting like a lash, and he can feel the welts coming up on his face already.

A growl works its way out of his throat. The worm’s in his way. When he brings his blade down again it takes a chunk out of the maned head, popping a row of bulging eyes, and he swings, and swings again, and bears down until the thing stops twitching.

It takes him the rest of the day to track Jaskier. The raised trail of the other worm dips down below the surface after about a mile, and he’s forced to stop, staring around in the overwhelming whiteness. The air tastes like metal and the sky looks like a dirty sheet and there’s no sound to follow, no sound at all.

He takes a deep breath, trying to catch what scent he can in the frigid air. No blood. He looks out across the featureless landscape and wonders where he would go, if he were a worm.

The dragger-worms he’s encountered make their dens in the dense, root-filled earth under marsh grass. He looks to the western treeline, gauging the distance. The ground will be warmer and softer in the forest, easier to dig in. He sets off.

He surprises the remaining worm at nightfall, half out of its den with its feelers probing through the snow. When he’s dispatched it and kicked the head several yards off, he grabs the body by the bristles and drags it free of the tunnel. It’s as long as four Roaches at least, its flesh dense and jellylike. He finds a stick and pokes it down the tunnel entrance until he hits something.

It doesn’t bite, so he reaches in up to the shoulder—and feels clammy skin and wet cloth and the puff of breath against his wrist, in the gap between his sleeve and his glove. He grabs Jaskier by the collar and hauls him up out of the earth.

His friend is blue-lipped and half-conscious, head lolling back. Geralt yanks a glove off with his teeth and feels for his pulse in his throat. Jaskier always looks small and a bit fragile to Geralt. Most people do. But right now he looks dead, this is what he’ll look like when he’s dead, his lively mouth slack and his face pale and cold—

It’s a terrible thing to know.

Geralt tries and fails to not think about the time with the djinn. His fault. This is his fault. Jaskier draws a hitched breath as Geralt picks him up. From the way his face twists in pain, he has a broken rib.

“Shh,” Geralt says. Jaskier lies still and quiet. Geralt starts wading back through the snow, following the path he made to get here.

He puts them both up at an inn just outside the valley until Jaskier’s ribs are better. Well, he pays for the first week or so, but when it becomes clear that it’s going to take longer he dips into Jaskier’s purse. He doesn’t know how long it takes the average human to heal rib fractures. His own only take a few days. The local wise woman informs him that most of the damage is bruising, and all it needs is rest and time.

She also informs him that Jaskier is a terrible patient, which Geralt already knew. He complains like someone who got top marks in a bardic college course on complaining, and when the wise woman forbids him to stand or sing, he sits in bed making deliberately terrible sounds on his lute.

One evening Geralt strides into his room, drops an oilcloth-wrapped package on his lap, and goes to walk out again. He’s almost made his escape when Jaskier says his name in a way he’s never really said it before: soft and shocked and pleased. Geralt stops in his tracks, still staring at the door and wanting desperately to go downstairs.

“Why, this is lovely of you!” Jaskier says. He must be testing the strings, because they sound softly. Geralt turns around slowly and sees Jaskier holding up the little kit violin, examining the joins on the wooden body. “Really, Geralt. To what do I owe this generosity?” he says.

“If you keep doing that thing with your lute I’m going to break it over your head,” Geralt says. “Play that instead.” The woman who’d sold it to him had demonstrated its use: held under the chin, with the bow angled just so. He figured you weren’t supposed to sing or talk while playing an instrument like that.

“I haven’t played a pochette in a few years,” Jaskier says warmly, fingering the bow. “But it comes back to you, it’s that sort of thing that always comes back.” He smiles up at Geralt. Geralt has the sudden impulse to look away, so he stares intently at Jaskier instead.

Several moments pass. Jaskier opens his mouth and then shuts it without saying anything, which is strange and unsettling even to Geralt, who’s never unsettled. He rests a hand on the body of the violin. His face says he’s waiting for something.

“I’m leaving tomorrow,” Geralt says. “Place up near Ingol needs a witcher. Don’t fall down the stairs and die before you’re better.”

Jaskier’s mouth goes thin and tight. He taps two fingers on the violin and makes a hollow sound.

“Duty calls,” he says finally. “Well. Thank you, Geralt. As always.”

“I mean it,” Geralt says. “Don’t fucking fall down the stairs.”

He leaves the room, goes down to the bar, and stares into his ale until it’s gone. Meanwhile the sound of the violin comes down the stairs, tentative at first, then growing stronger.

* * *

In summer Geralt meets Jaskier, and then Yennefer, and then a dragon, in quick succession. For the space of about twelve hours he lets himself think about a future unlike the one he’s always expected. It’s in the way Yennefer looks at him when it’s just the two of them, alone.

And then it all snaps and he’s just himself again, without her.

Jaskier’s still there, standing with him on the dry mountainside. He looks small and gaudy and fragile and pointless, just like all the things Geralt doesn’t want and shouldn’t have wished for; they break anyway, they’re distractions. Fate will take them from him if he dares to want them. He doesn’t want them. And anyway, he’s a witcher: he gets what he gets and no more.

He says some things to Jaskier that he can’t take back.

Afterwards, Jaskier goes off down the mountain with the dwarves. He’s a smudge of dark red among the rocks, and then he’s out of sight.

* * *

Fall in Aedirn is good for the hunt. Geralt spends his time rooting out wraiths at the henges that stand high out on the hills of that country, but he keeps from the main roads and lives on what he catches. Aedirnians still don’t take kindly to those with magic in the blood.

Yennefer is from here. She told him that fact, but she never told him what it was _like._ He’s used to missing her, not that the ache ever lessens. But when he missed her he usually had Jaskier around to distract him.

At some point, just him and Roach stopped being enough. He doesn’t know when that happened. He’s annoyed with himself for letting it.

He doesn’t know where Jaskier was born either. For a man who likes talking about himself so much, Jaskier has always shied from questions about his background, and Geralt has never pressed. Jaskier would like people to believe that he sprang into being full-formed, a song on his lips and a lute in his hand, which Geralt knows because he wrote a song about it.

It used to feel like he’d have time to learn it all from both of them, if he wanted to.

In the border city of Elberne, he skirts the crowds just long enough to sell his season’s lean pickings: deer hides, fleder fangs, cockatrice feathers. He leaves as quickly as he can—the smell and the noise make his head pound—and sets off east, heading for a way station where he’s found friendly lodging in the past.

Not far out of town, he twists in his saddle and half-draws his sword at the sound of racing hoofbeats.

He isn’t expecting Jaskier, riding up out of the line of sunset with his face in shadow. Lute on his back, the kit violin slung around his chest. He draws even and slows his horse.

“Evening,” he says after a moment.

Geralt doesn’t say anything.

“If you’re going to growl at me you might as well do it,” Jaskier says. He sounds unconcerned, but his eyes flash to Geralt’s face and then away, and there are the hundred other tells for his apprehension. He’s never been a closed book. “I thought it was you on the way out of Elberne. I’d know the top of that head anywhere—too white for a young man, too high for an old, parting the waves of humanity like a rock.”

“Bad metaphor,” Geralt grunts. “Where are you headed?”

“Derevin,” Jaskier says, relaxing a little. “I’ve got a standing invitation to play at Gracehall. Not bad, eh?”

Geralt doesn’t know what a Gracehall is. Jaskier leans over to examine his face and then pulls back. “It’s impressive,” he says. “You’d probably hate it.”

They ride on in silence. Not total silence; after a bit Jaskier starts singing, probably because talking hasn’t met with much success. It’s just snatches of a tune. Every time Geralt starts to recognize it, it changes again.

Night falls. To anyone else, Jaskier would be just a spot of movement in the darkness. Movement and a soft clear voice, picking up the threads of a refrain, winding them together, letting go again. But Geralt can see him quite clearly.

He rides with his chin up, eyes front, easy with the motion of his horse. He’s within arm’s reach, but he looks far, far away.

There’s no one else at the outpost except a tired-looking man doing the washing-up in the back of the common room. Geralt and Jaskier sit nursing weak ale and looking in different directions.

Geralt thinks about all the time Jaskier wasn’t there, and about how it still feels like he isn’t here. Like he’s on the other side of a door Geralt can’t reach through. He’s used to that feeling. Most of the world is on the other side of that door, a threshold he hasn’t crossed since he was five years old and standing in the lane alone, calling for his mother.

But he wants Jaskier on the same side as him, near and real, telling his terrible sex jokes and his actually quite good sex jokes and plucking at his lute, and, if he must, talking. You don’t get Jaskier without the talking. He lends shape to silence, he pretends that the world is beautiful and interesting and coherent, and sometimes he can even make it seem true.

But right now he’s pretending that he doesn’t care that Geralt is there. It stings. Here Geralt used to think he was harmless.

“’Night,” he says, and stands up. He’ll wake early and be on his way. A different way, in the opposite direction from Derevin.

Jaskier lunges forward in his chair and grabs Geralt’s wrist. He has a musician’s sturdy grip, hard and deft and patterned with string calluses. Geralt can get away easily enough, but he’d actually have to try. He doesn’t.

“Just where do you think you’re going?” Jaskier says. “Not even going to apologize? For your damnable rudeness the last time we parted ways,” he says, when Geralt wrinkles his brow. “Here I thought you were working up to it, I was giving you _space_. If you weren’t going to say sorry, what were you doing?”

Contemplating the inevitable loss of everything I care about, Geralt doesn’t say. He blinks down at Jaskier, who’s glaring up at him.

It occurs to him that somewhere along the way, he forgot that while you have to make your peace with losing people, first you’ve got to fight for them. That between the two inevitables, birth and burial, that’s the whole damn _point_ —and he was made for fighting. It’s what he’s for.

It occurs to Geralt that he’s gotten old.

He turns his hand in Jaskier’s grip and squeezes. It’s part handclasp, part threat, all promise. Jaskier’s hand trembles and opens, knuckles white.

“I don’t think you’re the cause of every bad thing that’s happened to me,” he says. “That’s a tall order even for you.”

“Flattering,” Jaskier says faintly. His eyes are wide and full of firelight. His fingers brush the back of Geralt’s wrist.

“Things are shit, but you’re good company,” Geralt says. “Shouldn’t have said I wanted to be free of you. I don’t.”

Jaskier’s mouth opens. Geralt gives another squeeze, not quite as hard, and lets go of him. He hoists his pack onto his shoulder and heads for the door.

“See you around,” he says.

He saddles Roach and rides hard into the darkness. He’s running low on first aid supplies, and on oil for his sword. He needs to make some money. It’s been a while since he passed through this part of the lowlands, and they may be in need of a witcher.

* * *

A month later Geralt walks into a clearing, stops, and considers walking back out again. It’s too late, though. Jaskier’s already seen him. His face lights up, and he gestures Geralt over to share what’s left of his wineskin.

Geralt relaxes once it becomes clear that they’re not going to talk about how Geralt admitted he was sorry, and maybe, accidentally, admitted something else. Jaskier is coming off a run of good performances, and he spends most of an hour ranking the towns he’s visited in order of best taverns to worst. Geralt did not ask, but he doesn’t protest either.

“And I’ve been working on a new song, actually,” Jaskier says, digging out his journal. There are new stains on the leather cover, and the tie’s been replaced. He runs a finger down the page and reels off a few lines of a ballad in the Redanian style—a bouncy rhythm and lots of doubletalk about fucking or nature or possibly fucking nature. It’s dirty and quite funny, with a sad, sweet something at its core.

Jaskier’s voice slips up into the high clear notes of the chorus, brisk as running water, fresh as sunlight. Geralt glares down at the melting snow between his boots.

Together they take the sloping road down to the sea, two days’ walk at an easy pace. Geralt rids a fishing village of a drowner and earns a free couple of nights in the local inn, where Jaskier swans into the evening crowds and sings his awful Redanian ballad. When he hits the verse about plowing her lush valley in days long past, the innkeeper hustles his son into the back room and gestures at Jaskier to play something else.

The rest of the audience is somewhere between tears and laughter. Jaskier looks up across the crowd, to Geralt at the far table. The notes he’s plucking turn into “Toss A Coin to Your Witcher,” and Geralt rolls his eyes and raises his mug a little in a half-toast.

Jaskier tweaks the lyrics to the occasion, as he sometimes does. _Toss a coin to your witcher, o harbor of plenty. My gallant friend, he’s a friend of humanity._

A week later they wind up in the region’s true harbor of plenty, a bigger town with its own minor nobility. Two days in, Jaskier spots the lord’s daughter in the town square, practically leaps over the fountain to get to her, and starts playing “Dew on the Fairest Rose,” on the kit violin. Three days after that, Geralt strides up behind the lord and cuffs him in the back of the head until he stops trying to drown Jaskier in the fountain. He loops an arm around the lord’s throat and hauls him backwards while Jaskier braces his hands on the stone basin and coughs up water.

“Pissant minstrel,” the lord growls, struggling in Geralt’s grip, and brings his boot down on the kit violin, abandoned on the cobblestones. It crunches. Geralt pulls him into a headlock and squeezes until the man thumps his arm for mercy.

Once he’s satisfied that the lord will stay out of drowning distance, he goes to seize Jaskier by the collar and drag him out of the square. But Jaskier ducks his hand, goes to his knees, and starts gathering up the shards of the violin. Water drips from his his face and hair, forming rivulets in the gaps between the cobbles.

“Leave it,” Geralt says.

“I can fix it,” Jaskier says, strained, his head down. Geralt looks down at the curve of his back. He’s wearing a coat the color of sand, soaked dark at the collar. Wet hair clings to the backs of his ears and the nape of his neck.

“You can’t,” he says. But Jaskier keeps picking up the pieces, so Geralt stands over him until he’s done.

“Maybe this is my cue to move on,” Jaskier says back at the inn. “Get further south, break some new ground.”

“As long as that ground’s not betrothed to someone else,” Geralt says.

“Oh—oh, ye of little faith,” Jaskier says. “I’ll have you know I stay out of trouble just fine when you’re not around.”

Geralt grunts.

“Fine enough,” Jaskier says.

Geralt squints.

“All right, all right,” Jaskier says. “I’m better off with you, not that that’s news.” He says it like he’s commenting on the weather. Geralt stares straight ahead and wills himself not to react. “All the same, I need a change of scenery.”

“I’m following a contract,” Geralt says. “I can’t leave here just yet.”

“Then let’s meet again in spring,” Jaskier says. “Ylvorna—have you ever been? It’s very nice when the dogwoods are in flower. If you go in for that sort of thing.”

“Ylvorna,” Geralt says. “All right.” Satisfaction settles in his chest. He tries not to think too much about why.

* * *

Dogwood blooms are bursting pink and white over the narrow path to Ylvorna. They line the streets too—of course Jaskier would choose a town covered in flowers. Geralt finds him in the market square, playing to an audience of three small children and a very old man. At least, he’s playing, and they’re in his vicinity. Jaskier’s cap is slouched on the ground. There are a few coins and a half-eaten apple in it.

Jaskier stops playing to wave to Geralt. The old man’s head comes up slowly.

“Play the one about the bird,” he says, in a whistly voice.

“I will not, so stop asking,” Jaskier says peevishly. “I only play original work.” He swings his lute onto his back, snatches his cap off the ground, and examines the apple.

“Tough crowd,” Geralt says. Jaskier offers the apple to Roach, who lips at it appreciatively.

“Fancy meeting you here,” he says.

“Hm,” Geralt says. He wants to reach out and take hold of Jaskier, to make sure that he’s real. He stays where he is. “A pissant minstrel told me this was the place to be.”

They walk, and he lets Jaskier wheedle the details of his latest hunt from him. Jaskier starts composing almost immediately, even though Geralt threatens to knot his arms behind his back. He settles for correcting poetic exaggerations. “No, no—if an alghoul doesn’t have spines it doesn’t rhyme,” Jaskier protests.

“Then get a better rhyme,” Geralt says.

“Look, when it comes to White Wolf ballads—”

“Is that a genre now,” Geralt says.

“People don’t want realism,” Jaskier says. “They want fantastic feats, heart-pounding horror! Not alghouls without spines.”

“Without spines they’re less likely to turn me into strips of jerky,” Geralt says.

“Nice turn of phrase,” Jaskier says. “That’s actually quite evocative—mind if I use that?”

The town’s master asks Geralt to investigate the waterfall north of town—there are increasingly urgent rumors of a drowner in the river below. Jaskier comes along, promising to stay well back.

“Come on, I’m not in any real danger when you’re around,” he says.

“I,” Geralt says. “You—hm.” He tries to glare Jaskier off. Jaskier only flinches a little bit.

“So that’s not a no,” he says.

It’s a lone drowner, undersized and viciously hungry, and Geralt dispatches it without too much trouble. As soon as it slumps back into the pool below the falls, he whirls to mark Jaskier’s location.

Jaskier is well back as promised, perched in a tree in fact, watching with his mouth open. His journal is open in his lap and he’s writing furiously. When Geralt looks up at him, he turns pink. “Excellent stuff,” he says. “Keep it coming.”

They’re too far from town to make it back at a reasonable time, so they pitch camp downriver, Jaskier lamenting the inn room he’s already paid for.

“Leave off and play a song or something,” Geralt says, when he won’t stop complaining. That has the blessed result of drawing Jaskier up short, but for the wrong reasons. The bard fixes him with a skeptical look.

“You never ask me to sing,” he says.

“I still wasn’t,” Geralt grumbles. “But if you can’t stop yourself from making noise, make better noise.”

Jaskier breaks into a grin. Geralt carefully doesn’t change his facial expression. Slowly, Jaskier’s grin fades into something harder to read. He pulls his lute onto his lap.

“I did write you a song,” he says finally. “Been hanging on to it for a while.”

“You’ve written me a lot of songs,” Geralt says.

“No,” Jaskier says. “I’ve written your reputation a lot of songs. I’ve written the world a lot of songs, with you as the muse. This one’s just to sing to you.”

 _Just_ , he says, but he won’t meet Geralt’s eyes. Turned toward the woods in profile, he looks soulful and absurd and resolute, the way they are in ballads.

Geralt takes a deep breath. He waits a bit. “Penny for your thoughts,” he says.

“Oh, no,” Jaskier says ruefully. “This performance is free.”

He plays a few idle notes, and then slides smoothly into a tune that’s at once familiar and new. It’s a walking song, a good steady-paced melody without flourishes. He plucks a note, holds it in his throat and hums, and sings. _Morning came over the mountains, there I was, there we were._

_Noon burned above the broken path, you left but I return._

_A season’s span to where I find you, call and I return._

_O the light fades in the valley, I’ll return, return._

His voice is a little hoarse after the long day, and he stares rigidly into the trees, probably trying to look dignified. He doesn’t look dignified, he looks like he’s steeling himself for a dunk in cold water. But his hands are as sure as they’ve ever been.

The song’s other verses go the same way, morning to night. Geralt recognizes the places they’ve been. Someone leaves, not to be found again, and Jaskier sings _But I’ll return, return._ When he’s done he stills the strings with the flat of his hand.

“Is that a promise,” Geralt says quietly. Jaskier turns toward him, startled.

“More fool me,” he says. “But yes.”

The melody rolls over and over in Geralt’s head. It sounds like the kind of song you hear when you’re young and remember when you’re old, plain and familiar, an accompaniment for all your life. He doesn’t know how to say that, or any of the other things he’s thinking, so he slides a hand up the back of Jaskier’s neck and kisses him.

“Oh,” Jaskier says against his mouth, and the lute strings twang. “Oh, you—you liked it.” He’s smiling and trying to kiss back at the same time. Geralt growls and holds his head still and focuses on expressing just how much he liked it. Jaskier’s smile melts into a gasp, by which he gathers that he got his point across.

A little later, after the lute has slipped to the ground with a bump, Geralt rests his face against the side of Jaskier’s neck and listens to him hum, _return, return_. The notes buzz in his throat, against the quick light beat of his pulse.

“Do you have any notes, though,” Jaskier says.

“What,” Geralt says.

“Do you have any notes,” Jaskier says doggedly. “How do you feel about the imagery? Is it catchy but still authentic? Stylistically coherent, but not too conventional? I rely an awful lot on audience feedback, but I’m never going to sing this to anyone but you so I need everything you’ve got.”

“Huh,” Geralt grunts, trying to decide whether to be pleased about the last part or baffled over the rest of it. He pulls back. Jaskier’s expression is heavy-lidded and warm, and his mouth is wet. Geralt is definitely pleased. “It’s fine how it is,” he says.

Jaskier’s eyebrows pinch together. He opens his mouth.

“It’s good,” Geralt amends, exploring the ties on Jaskier’s shirt. They’re easy to undo, so he does. “It’s nice.”

“I’m just now realizing that you’re not a very discerning critic,” Jaskier says, shivering through the last word as Geralt spreads one hand across his chest. His own hand, resting on Geralt’s knee, sneaks a little higher.

“Lucky you,” Geralt says. Jaskier’s mouth makes an _O_ of affront and Geralt slips his thumb into it. Jaskier stops talking after that.

A few days later, on the road, Geralt catches himself humming as he brushes Roach down in the morning. _Light fades in the valley, I’ll return, return._ When he glances up, Jaskier is staring at him over the campfire, startled and fond. Geralt rolls his eyes and goes back to his work, still humming.

**Author's Note:**

> 9/23/20: the excellent lady_bard wrote a lovely expanded version of the song, which you can listen to on youtube [right here!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0JJqFCiOuM&ab_channel=LadyLaughsAlotS.)
> 
> sure, so I got a little emotional about the idea of creativity as an act of love. don't let that distract you from the fundamental fact of Jaskier's ridiculousness
> 
> (I wanted to name this "build me up buttercup" so badly you don't even know)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Young Flower](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22982707) by [Fancy_Pants](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fancy_Pants/pseuds/Fancy_Pants)




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